Sugarcane is the highest yielding biomass producer. Typically, farmers reduce the sugarcane post-harvest leaf residue by open air burning, which negatively impacts air quality. Fuel grade ethanol can be made from sugarcane leaf litter residue following acid hydrolysis pre-treatments to remove lignin which acts as a physical barrier to enzyme hydrolysis. Thus, down-regulation of lignin biosynthesis pathway enzymes is a promising strategy to increase the efficiency of bio-ethanol production from hemicellulosic sugarcane residues. In the lignin pathway, 4-coumarate-CoA ligase (4CL) is a key enzyme that catalyze the formation of CoA thiol esters of 4-coumarate and other hydroxycinnamates. However, sugarcane has a complex polypoid genome and these genes belong to a large gene family. Their broad substrate specificities have made it difficult to identify orthologs that are specifically involved in lignin biosynthesis. Thus, there remains a need in the art for means for inhibiting lignin biosynthesis in sugarcane.